Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 86: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ao her thanks and drank deep. — Presently came Nepenthe. ? It was the little-known peyotl of the Aztecs, one of the strongest narcotics known, the use of which is now for- bidden to the Indians of the Southwest by a paternal Government. it; fewer still know how to prepare it. The secret has been well preserved among the tribes and there are not today a hundred white men who know even its name. To the poor Indian of those days, laboring on enforced tasks for his Span- ish masters, it was the only thing that gave him solace, for peyotl attacks the memory centers of the brain and leads the drinker by easy and gradual steps to a Nirvana that is more wonder-filled than any of De Quincey’s dreams. For that very reason the Spanish laws forbade it to the Indians, who were im- moderate in its use and were rendered incapable of any labor for many days. When a dominant race can forbid to the conquered the right to forget their wrongs, it has gone far on the path of conquest. Mercedes drank, cautiously at first, then greedily. The pupils of her eyes dilated - slowly as the potent drug took hold. ‘Presently she slipped down in the bed. Followed a brief period when she strove and struggled till Maria had to hold her in bed by main force. Soon the frenzy passed and she felt a heaving motion under her as if she were on a ship at sea, then a feeling of suffocation and of lights, lights that formed and broke inside her brain in great swarming circles of sparks. Again came the tramp of passing thousands— Maria’s voice saying—‘“It will do. Take it and go”—and then peace. ‘Long afterward she never felt sure how long the spell had lasted. There were times when the brain, striving to react to normal, almost but never quite functioned properly. There were hours when the inert body strove to regain its poise but it never quite succeeded. For hours she lived and moved in an uncer- tain way and the tired brain never re- corded a sensation. . It was a veritable death in life. That is what peyotl does, leaving the mind and body open to sug- gestion, to which they reply as certainly <<. Se be or ~ ee ~ Few know — Adventure as a subject of hypnosis responds to the suggestion of the dominant mind. So passed four hours of Mercedes life, of which she was never to have any recollection. [V “HE cocks crowed Andres out of his blankets, and when the noise and turmoil had subsided, he set to work to whip his men into shape for the march. Coronado, armed cap-a-pie, met him in the plaza and reined in his horse to let the long column file past him as it took the field, intent on that great mis- sion. First came a body of a hundred horsemen under Andres, a gay mass of color with the painted peloncillos flutter- ing gaily from their lance points. Following them came the main battle, composed of arquebusiers and cross- bowmen bedring their own weapons, clad in steel helmets and jerkins — heavily quilted .with cotton that would turn an Indian arrow. Along with these went the six falconets, drawn by mules, and after them, rank behind rank of the In- dian auxiliaries aglow with all their savage panoply of wooden helmets, leather shields adorned with the vivid colors of savage heraldry. These were armed with swords of toughened wood, with the deadly maca- huitl, long clubs shaped like modern hockey sticks, on the inside curves of which were set great flakes of sharp obsidian that the Aztecs called itztli, that cut like knives. Deadly blow-guns from the south were there too, and most deadly of all, the long sixteen-foot, copper-headed pikes of Chinantla. Behind them came the women and the camp servants with the five hundred pack animals, and, in rear of these, the droves of two hundred bullocks, sixty horses, five thousand sheep and two thousand swine, all kept up by the patient rear guard. : Very gallantly they filed out of the gate, where, at a signal from Mendoza, the lances of the guard clanged down in a last salute. “Success.” He waved his gauntleted hand at them. “Here is your guide.” He patted on the shoulder the grim- EOPMIC OOOKS ~ Tek ~ . _— YS sk eae oe ee ee Se ee eel i aes (E00)